In every region of the world, public opinion polls show widespread support for democracy as the best form a government. People want the ability to participate in government and public affairs and to choose their political leaders. They also want to benefit from accountability in government, respect for human rights and equality of treatment. To be successful and maintain popular support, however, democracies must also produce visible improvements in citizens’ quality of life, a key factor in preventing autocratic regimes and anti-system movements from gaining ground. In democratic systems, final authority lies with the people. Political parties are one of the primary avenues through which citizens can exercise that authority and participate in political life. When citizens join political parties, donate money or time, help to shape party policies, or stand for office under a party ticket, they are exercising some of the basic rights that are part and parcel of democracy. Democracy is more likely to develop and endure when all segments of a society are free to participate and influence political outcomes without suffering bias or reprisal. How political parties define, engage and mobilize their constituents has implications for the extent to which citizens feel included in public affairs, represented by political leaders, and able to hold their leaders to account. Political parties contribute to democratic governance by aggregating and representing the interests of their constituents. They play that role through certain key functions. Parties propose policies that are representative of their members. They campaign on those policies and strive to implement them when in power. When in opposition, parties help hold governments accountable by contributing to oversight of the executive and critiquing or presenting alternatives to ruling party policy proposals. This competition of ideas encourages each party to refine its own proposals and seek common ground with others; it can also result in better outcomes for the public. Thus, parties provide citizens with a space to express their policy preferences, opportunities to influence the direction of their government, and a means to hold that government accountable at election time. Moreover, how parties formulate and seek to advance their policy proposals has implications for the extent to which governments are able to improve public welfare. In healthy multiparty systems, there is sufficient party competition to allow the electorate a meaningful choice: too many parties may cause the political landscape to be fragmented and unstable, whereas too few may lead to a highly polarized political environment. Parties in vibrant democratic systems embrace civil competition but are also capable of the debate, dialogue and compromise required for government to function.1 While civic groups have key roles to play in developing and sustaining democracy, vibrant political parties are equally necessary. Civil society without effective parties and political institutions creates a void, giving opportunities to demagogues and extremists who undermine democratic governance. While there are parties without democracy, there can be no democracy without political parties. Parties in many countries may be flawed, but they are also indispensable in democratic governance. For more than 30 years, NDI has worked with democratic parties in over 80 countries around the world to create more open political environments in which citizens can actively participate in the democratic process. The Institute shares tools, strategies and techniques that parties can use to develop stronger connections to the public, mount competitive electoral campaigns, and perform more effectively in the legislature. The Institute’s multi-partisan programs seek 1. Peter Burnell, Building Better Democracies:

How Ethiopian news media have become dangerously divided along ethnic fault lines.

How Ethiopian news media have become dangerously divided along ethnic fault lines

As the government expanded media freedoms, journalism flourished but also got much more polarised, 

Benon H. Oluka reports

Tuesday 23 March 2021

In mid-September 2018, Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa was paralysed by a spate of ethnic protests that culminated in the killing of 23 people. The public show of dissent, smothered by the military, fractured a burgeoning attempt by the country’s new reformist Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to reconcile a nation deeply divided along ethnic lines. 

While Abiy’s efforts to mend fences with neighbour Eritrea won him the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, the ethnic fault lines in his own country have grown deeper. Between 2018 and 2020, the country went through several violent episodes, including an attempted coup in June 2019 and a conflict between the federal and regional authorities in the Tigray region.

As Ethiopia grappled with the initial clusters of social, economic and political disruptions, Dr Mulatu Alemyehu Moges and Dr Terje Skjerdal, journalism researchers at Addis Ababa University and NLA University College respectively, decided to study troubling trends in news items disseminated by media outlets. With the funding of IMS and the Fojo Media Institute, Sweden’s leading media development organization, they both produced a 60-page study report titled “The Ethnification of the Ethiopian Media,” published in November 2020. 

The report combines in-depth interviews with about 25 individuals in key positions in media houses spread out across Ethiopia and framing analysis on select stories produced by 10 outlets about eight crucial incidents between 2018 and 2020. Here are its key findings:

Ethnic belonging and identity politics are gaining significance as central frames of reference in the current Ethiopian media discourse. The report points to the tendency of journalists to frame issues in a way that aligns with their ethnic background.The data points towards a more pluralistic (and more polarised) media society. The authors say the polarisation is fuelled by ethno-nationalistic media of different origin and ownership, and by pan-Ethiopianist channels.The previous stronghold of the federal state media – public broadcasters like the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation, the Ethiopian News Agency and the three newspapers published by the Ethiopian Press Agency – has been overtaken by a fragmented state media structure with the growing significance of regional mass media agencies. The government’s recent decision to open up the media space has seen the influence of the public broadcasters wane significantly.Journalists are starting to form alliances along regional and ethnic fault lines, as illustrated by the launch of the Amhara Journalists Association or the Tigray Journalists Association. They are highly inclined to use sources that support their own ideological interest and avoid quoting sources from other ethnicities which could balance the story.Various channels, especially the online platforms that were allowed to operate in the country following the liberalisation of the airwaves, practice a reporting style that mixes acknowledged objective standards for reporting news with the opinions of journalists and media owners. Many media practitioners are deeply concerned about this.

In separate interviews, two Ethiopian practising journalists who have read the report said that they agree with its findings.

Ayele Addis, the president of the Amhara Journalists Association, which brings together media practitioners who speak one of Ethiopia’s two main languages (the other is Oromo), says identity politics is having a huge impact on the Ethiopian media industry. “The polarization of the Ethiopia media is along ethnic lines and the main reason is the government structure,” he says. 

Belay Manaye, a journalist with Amhara Satellite Radio and Television, added that the report captured “the reality” across the country. “Ethiopian politics is highly polarised along ethnic lines. This manifested in the media too and it has become difficult to stop because of politics,” he says. 

A different landscape

In sentiments echoed by both Ayele and Manaye, Dr Skjerdal, who carried out the framing analysis, noted that ethnicity has always been an ever-present undercurrent in Ethiopian media and journalism and said the difference today is its scale and scope. 

“From the Emperors’ years (1930-1974) many decades ago, ethnicity was really expressed as an exclusion mechanism and it continued to be like that for a long time. But since coming to power in 2018, Abiy Ahmed has quite radically changed the policies towards the media,” he says.

Abiy’s initiative to carry out comprehensive political reforms, aimed at promoting unity in a country whose citizens had suffered under the yoke of oppressive and divisive past leaders, included the release of several journalists from prison and the easing of the hitherto prevalent media censorship.

Such actions improved the media environment in Ethiopia so rapidly that within two years, the country improved its ranking on the Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index by 51 places, arguably the biggest leap up the table that any country had ever made. It also earned Ethiopia the right to host UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day in 2019.

However, even as the Ethiopian media basked in its newfound wriggle room, sceptics argued that without institutionalising the reforms, offered through the magnanimity of the new Prime Minister’s leadership, the country could face many challenges. Some of the leaders of the newly unshackled news organizations, for example, are likely to face ethical dilemmas due to their often overlapping media, political and business roles.

“There is [an] equal chance for the change to regress as it can progress. It needs a collective effort from the media, the civil society, and the government to save it from falling into a vicious cycle,” Befekadu Hailu, editor of the Addis Maleda weekly, told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) in early 2019.

One of the challenges the Prime Minister’s reforms brought about, according to Dr Skjerdal, was the amplification of previously suppressed or localized ethnic disagreements.

“The different viewpoints came to the fore and it was all in the open. The different groups in Ethiopia started to compete against each other for attention, and the other factor is the return of what I call the digital diaspora [people who operated online media organizations abroad but which started establishing media channels in Addis Ababa.] Most of them did not get a license to broadcast but they were producing content. This return of the digital diaspora has also massively impacted the new media situation in Ethiopia,” he explained.

“So many countries within a country”

The liberalisation of the media space paved the way for non-professional media actors. More extremist views became more dominant. Dr Alemayehu, who carried out the interviews for the report, says they brought out the ethnic divisions that now plague the media in his country.

“By looking at the content from the media outlets, you can see that there are so many countries within a country,” he says. “Sometimes you wonder, ‘Are we really in the same country?’ One issue can be reported quite differently by different media outlets. This is because Ethiopian media is becoming extremely negligent of the other communities. They have their own target audiences, and they don’t care about others.”

The report concludes that increased polarisation in Ethiopia’s journalism is “one of the unsolicited secondary effects” of the new-born media pluralism. “While previous dividing lines were described in political terms, often following a private versus state media axis, the new polarisation is overwhelmingly informed by ethnic interest,” the report says.

That situation has seen the emergence or increase in the influence of largely private media companies and associations that are affiliated to ethnic groups such as Omoro, Amhara, Tigray and Somali. They account for 75% of the country’s population, which explains their considerable political and social influence. Yet the segmentation doesn’t stop there. Even journalists and media outlets from the smaller ethnic groups are similarly coalescing around their ethnic echo chambers, thereby cutting off voices from other parts of an otherwise vast country.

“It is now common to describe media outlets primarily out of their ethnic sympathies. This is most sharply pronounced in newly returned companies such as Oromia Media Network (OMN, Oromo-affiliated) and Amhara Satellite Radio and Television (ASRAT, Amhara-affiliated), but a number of other media institutions have similar commitments to one region or one specific ethnicity,” explains the report.

According to the report, even public media has now fallen victim to the same polarisation. In the past, such official television, radio and print media outlets were largely centralized and would represent the ruling coalition in its entirety. Today, with the rise in regional mass media agencies, the state media entity has seen different regional outlets nurture their own respective distinct identities in line with the most prominent ethnic group in the region where they are based.

“Ownership has become subordinate to ethnic commitment. For example, in the Tigray region, privately-owned Dimtsi Weyane Tigray joins forces with state-owned Tigray Mass Media Agency to counter the media from other regions,” reveals the report.

For Dr Alemayehu, who has published several reports and a doctoral thesis about journalism in Ethiopia, a divided media makes it difficult to spread diverse, or even unifying, content within the Ethiopian society. “If someone is watching one television, they are not getting enough balanced and complete information,” he says.

Drawing from his experience, Ayele says every news organisation is pushing its own agenda, not working for the public good. “It is more activism than journalism,” he says. 

The impact of this problem is being felt in different ways. It increases the segmentation of media ownership and leadership structures, limits the potential of journalists to grow professionally, and stifles the representation in media outlets across the country.

Roles and interests blurred 

While the law in Ethiopia prohibits political organizations from owning media houses, it’s easy to find political figures behind the ownership of news organisations, Dr Skjerdal says. 

“If we trace different outlets, we can easily track them down to persons who are politically active and often have ethnic interests. What we have seen is a number of cases where some of the media owners have left journalism and gone into political activity,” explains Dr Skjerdal, who has taught and researched journalism in Ethiopia since 2002.

In an environment where the roles between ethnic, political and media actors are so blurred, it is little wonder that the framing of news stories is not a role that journalists play with no undue external influence. According to the report, the Ethiopian media uses the approaches of annihilation and othering to frame stories.

Annihilation includes ignoring important aspects of an ethnic or political group that is perceived as an enemy, blurring sensitive parts of an issue to make it vague, deviation from the main issue, charming the other side, and reporting the issue in a non-ethnic or non-contentious way. Othering means taking information from another outlet to expose what another ethnic group is doing wrong, emphasising a symbolic attachment to stories to create solidarity, victimisation, blaming the other side and undermining others.

Ayele explains that Ethiopia’s currently segmented media landscape has narrowed down the reporting scope and affected the free-flow of possibly unifying ideas. “Journalists are not free to go and report in other regions,” he says. “We have the same ID and the same Ethiopian passport, but because of the ethnification, there is no freedom to cover other regions in the same country. Freedom of movement is limited. Freedom of access to information is limited by region. Because of this, the national consensus is in danger.”

Sören Östergaard Sörensen, programme manager at IMS-Fojo Ethiopia, the initiative that funded the research, says that the study by Skjerdal and Alemayehu has helped to clearly identify the red flags in media coverage that begins to be dominated by “us vs them” rhetoric.

“When the democratic winds blow in the country and space for freedom of expression is widened, no regime should be surprised if oppressed ethnic identities will flourish in the media space, not least in social media, like plants met by long-awaited sunshine and rain. This is an asset for the country. The difficult part of it is to ensure that these cultural expressions are not accelerating polarisation and ethno-nationalism,” he says.

For Manaye, the solution lies in the de-ethnicization of Ethiopia’s politics. “Political reform is needed,” he says. “A Constitutional amendment is needed. That would stop media polarisation along ethinic lines in return, and would help the media improve accordingly.”

Ayele agrees and adds there is a need to go further and revise Ethiopia’s media laws to take into consideration the lessons the country should be able to pick from the rampant partition of its media outlets along ethnic lines.

Lessons for other countries

Even as Ethiopia searches for answers to the challenges its media faces today, the authors of the report stress that there are lessons that nearly every sub-Saharan African nation can take from the Ethiopian experience. 

Dr Skjerdal says that a considerable number of media practitioners in sub-Saharan African tend to underplay the impact of ethnic identification in their analysis of the journalism practiced on the continent. “In most countries in sub-Saharan Africa, you will have a number of ethnicities but when we speak and analyse the media, we are a little bit oblivious to that factor. And yet when you are going to a newsroom, they are well aware of what could be an undercurrent in many newsrooms in Africa,” he says.  

It’s impossible not to draw parallels between Ethiopia and Rwanda, a country where news media sharply divided along ethnic lines helped transform a political crisis into a genocide that led to the killing of nearly a million people in the early 1990s. Or between Ethiopia and Kenya, where a journalist was accused of using his radio show to fan the flames of the post-election violence that claimed hundreds of lives and led to the displacement of thousands of others.

In Ethiopia, a country where at least three genocides have already happened in the past, Dr Alemayehu has seen a level of caution within the media to suggest that the media will not escalate the situation to a point where massive killings could happen again.

“The media is now becoming a bit cautious,” he says. “In July 2020, the Ethiopian government shut down a couple of media organizations that were using a lot of hate words to incite some forms of conflict in the community. After shutting down those media organizations, such kinds of tense situations were reduced but animosity still exists,” he explains. 

And yet both Dr Alemayehu and Sörensen agree that a divided news ecosystem could lead Ethiopia to live in a vicious cycle of polarisation and the situation could even force the government to withdraw some of the freedoms that the media has gained.

“There are a lot of progressive freedom-seeking people around Prime Minister Abiy, but there are also more traditional elements holding back. The window of opportunity for more free news media is still open, and it would be sad if the media themselves will be to blame for shutting it,” he says.

Sörensen, his organization and their various partners are now trying to educate more journalists in the country about the dangers of the ethnification of the news media. By late February, some of their partners had held two major events in the cities of Addis Ababa and Bahir Dar, both of which were built around this theme. 

Two things that Ethiopians have going for them, according to both Sörensen and Dr Alemayehu, are the high number of media training institutions (21 universities offer journalism-related courses) and some similar cultural practices that can serve as a social glue.

Sörensen says the rest of the world should “have patience” with the news media in Ethiopia as it finds its footing after protracted periods of uncertainty and political disorder. “When Prime Minister Abiy came to power, it created unrealistic expectations,” he says. “It will take time before media reform can be rooted. It should take time.”

Benon Herbert Oluka is a Ugandan multimedia journalist, a co-founder of The Watchdog, a centre for investigative journalism in his home country, and a member of the African Investigative Publishing Collective. Oluka’s work has been recognised three times on the African continent as winner of the 2008 Akintola Fatoyinbo Africa Education Journalism Award (First Prize, English category), the 2011 CNN-MultiChoice African Journalist of the Year Award (Tourism category) and the Thomson Reuters’ 2011 Niall FitzGerald Prize for Young African Journalists.

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Democratic Government

Concept of Democratic government:

Contemporary political theory literature uses the term democratic government to refer to a complex set of formal institutions and actors representing the state that has the monopoly of legitimate power. A democratic government is characterized by its ability to make decisions and its capacity to enforce them in a legitimate institutional frame (Stoker 2000; Eggerston 1990). In this understanding, a democratic government embraces all elected and appointed policy actors or public officials, who represent the. executive, legislative, and judicial bodies, as well as the civil service with its numerous internal departments and agencies and its state-owned and/or controlled enterprises.1 Besides these governmental institutions, there is a highly fragmented maze of nongovernmental organizations and private stakeholder groups that are directly or indirectly involved in the complex process of governmental decision making. They include the private sector—corporations, business associations, and lobbying organizations—and organizations such as political parties, civil society organizations, grass roots movements, think tanks, academic organizations, the media, and social networks.

 Today there exist a broad range of theoretical definitions of democratic governance.2 Many are based on historical derivations of how governments and their democratic agendas evolved over time (see subsection 2.1.1). Most of the contemporary understandings, however, overlap in many aspects and can be grouped around the three following:

domains of policy, politics, and polity (Pleasant Breeden 1972)

1  A policy is a deliberate collective agreement about substantive principles according to which decisions are made. In a democratic system, these principles relate to the distribution of power among institutions of government; the legitimacy and authority of state institutions; rules and norms that determine who holds power and how decisions are made about the exercise of authority; relationships of accountability among state officials and between these officials and citizens; and the impact of institutions and policies on public welfare and human rights.

 2    Politics represent the democratic processes by which decisions are made. These decision-making procedures focus on the tasks of a government to determine which and how public goods and public services must be delivered to best match citizens’ preferences and needs. 

  3    A polity refers to a government’s organization and its institutional and administrative bodies, which fulfill its responsibilities of delivering public services and public goods. This includes the management of the administrative and fiscal affairs of the state.

 In summary, democratic governments are the legally and politically responsible final decision-making and implementation bodies that are composed of the executive, legislative, and judicial bodies as well as a multitude of civil service departments, agencies, and state-controlled enterprises. Democratic governance refers to the collectivity of governmental and other nongovernmental and private stakeholder organizations as well as social networks and international donor and development institutions that are openly or covertly involved in the governmental decision and implementation process. These decisions are about the implementation of democratic principles (policy), delivery of governmental task (politics), and managing appropriate governmental institutions (polity)

Blindenbacher, Raoul; Nashat, Bidjan. The Black Box of Governmental Learning (p. 46). World Bank. Kindle Edition.

Ethiopia: Can the Somali region speak?MARCH 7, 2021

Eritrea Hub

Information about Eritrea and the Horn of Africa

Ethiopia: Can the Somali region speak?

MARCH 7, 2021 

“A new history of the Somali region of Ethiopia needs to be written from this vantage point of centrality. It needs to make the voices of its men, women, children, and elderly heard. It will have to tell the story not of one people, but the stories of many people—of camel herders, female traders, khat sellers, school girls, farmers, administrators, returnees, rebels, investors, daily laborers, poets, and many others. It will have to tell stories of the powerful and the powerless, of joy and grief, of hope and despair. It will have to break free from the tropes of the existing politicized narratives.”

Source: Ethiopia Insight

Can the Somali region speak?

5 MARCH, 2021

BY TOBIAS HAGMANN

Ethiopian Somalis must reject politically motivated, shallow historical narratives and produce a new story that accurately captures their lived experiences.

(The author dedicates this article to the memory of Ahmed Ali Gedi ‘Borte.’)

Many years ago I conducted an interview with a leader of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF). At the time, Ethiopia’s Somali regional state was often referred to as ’region 5’ or kilil amist. When I asked the ONLF leader about ’region 5,’ he became irritated and said “My home is not a number!” I thought he was just being nationalistic as ONLF members often refer to the Somali inhabited parts of Ethiopia as ’Ogadenia’ rather than Somali regional state, its official name. Much later, I realized that he was right. Who wants his or her home to be a number? Who wants to live in a place whose name has been externally imposed?Admittedly, geographical names are never neutral. Most Africans had their names and identities imposed on them by European colonialists. But what if a society or a community never gets to choose its name? This has been and continues to be the case for Somalis living in today’s Somali regional state of Ethiopia.

In the case of Ethiopia’s Somali population, this conundrum goes far beyond geographical or territorial designations. Rather, it reflects a crisis both of representation and self-representation. In spite of ethnic federalism and a constitutionally guaranteed right to political self-determination, Somalis in Ethiopia never had the chance to decide on their political fate. Equally important, they rarely had the opportunity to write or narrate their own lives, history, and experience.

This enduring crisis of self-representation is maybe best formulated as a question, namely: Can the Somali region speak?

Here, I am referring to the famous essay by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak with the provocative title ’Can the subaltern speak?’ published in 1983. Her text is a classic contribution to post-colonial theory, which criticizes the continued dominance of Western knowledge in the representation of non-Westerners.

Jigjiga’s autocratic modernity

By Tobias Hagmann

What does Spivak mean when she asks: ’Can the subaltern speak?’ By subaltern she refers to social groups—peasants, lower caste individuals, women, and so on—who have continuously been subordinated. Their history and collective experience have mostly been represented by others—by colonizers, by national elites, by intellectuals. They are often ’spoken about,’ but are rarely allowed to ’speak for themselves.’ Their agency and subjectivity is denied because others constantly speak for and about them.

When I ask ’Can the Somali region speak?’ what I mean is: can the people who live in this part of Ethiopia speak for themselves? Can they represent themselves? Can they define and shape their own narrative? So the question really is: has the Somali region ever spoken for itself? Or, has it mostly been others who have spoken for the Somali region and its inhabitants?

In their modern history, Somalis living in Ethiopia’s southeastern lowlands never had the opportunity to speak for themselves. Instead, it has been outsiders who have named, claimed, and defined the Somali region’s inhabitants. The outsiders speak about Somalis in such a way that goes in line with their political geopolitical interests.

Opposing historiographies

Why is it that Somalis in Ethiopia have struggled to speak for and represent themselves?

One reason is that the Somali region has been the object of two opposing national historiographies since the late 19th century. By historiography I mean both popular stories and academic writings that are told and written about a particular community, society, or nation. In its broadest sense, historiography includes the official history that is taught in schools, but also stories that are passed on from one generation to the next. In essence, I mean the historical interpretations that most members of a given society agree upon, often uncritically.

On the one hand, we have Somali historiography and the Somali studies tradition. Their accounts describe the Somali region—often referred to as Ogaden—as Somali territory colonized by Ethiopian highlanders, but also by British and Italian powers. In this narrative, the ’Somali region’ is a territory that, in reality, is part of Somalia and the Somali people.

The region is memorized as a place of suffering and repression by successive Ethiopian regimes from Haile Selassie to the TPLF and the former regional president Abdi Mohamed Omar ’Iley.’ The Somali region is seen as a place of displacement and the home of rich natural resources—from frankincense to oil and gas—which foreigners want to loot. From the viewpoint of Somali historiography, the Somali region of Ethiopia is a space of repeat victimization.

On the other hand, we have Ethiopian historiography and Ethiopian studies, which for a long time promoted what historians call ’the great tradition.’ The ‘great tradition’ offers an almost transcendental tale of the Ethiopian monarchy and nation-state, emphasizing the country’s past and future glories. Writings by Ethiopian historians, soldiers, and administrators reveal a completely different view of the Ogaden and of today’s Somali region.

Their stories portray the region as a place of hardship for habeshas. They describe Somalis as rebellious people who are “always fighting” and on whose loyalty the Ethiopian state cannot count on. They saw and often still see the Somali region as a land of nomads who need to be civilized and modernized by the Ethiopian state bureaucracy through sedentarization, development, planning, and administration.

Time for reconciliation and apologies to Ethiopian Somalis

By Sharezad Faisal Gas

In this narrative, the Somali parts of Ethiopia have to be defended to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity – in particular against neighbouring Somalia. But its inhabitants can never be fully trusted.

Which one of these two opposing historiographies of Ethiopia’s Somali region should we listen to? Which one is more accurate? Which one captures the past and present of this part of the world better?

Many readers familiar with the region will have their opinions on this. I want to argue that both historiographies make some important points, but both are also seriously deficient, reductionist, and ideological. Neither one of them does justice to the real history of the people of the Somali region.

Both historical traditions treat the Somali region as a periphery, which is of interest only as long as it is relevant to the political center. The Somali region has been and still is a double periphery – peripheral to both Ethiopia and Somalia. At the end of the day, both historiographies are the by-product of either the Somali or the Ethiopian nationalist project. Too often, they are not based on local people’s lived experiences or family histories. Rather, they tell the story of the Ogaden, now the Somali region, from the vantage point of male leaders with a particular political agenda.

Both historiographies of the Somali region silence the lives and struggles of normal people such as rural folks, women, minorities, and, generally, less powerful groups. As a result, both have prevented the emergence of a historiography of the Somali region that is thought, written, and told not from the viewpoint of Mogadishu or Addis Ababa, but from the viewpoint of Gode, Jigjiga, Degehabur and Shilabo, Afdheer and Qabridehar, Gora Babagsa, Kelafo, Wardheer, Fiq, Shinile, and so on.

Silencing ’Somali region’

Some might argue that history is always contested. Or that what matters most are not historical facts, but how history is used in present-day politics. In other words, what really matters is who can make his or her history count and whose history is being discounted or swept under the rug. My argument here is that both Somali studies and Ethiopian historiography have swept a large part of the lived experiences of Somalis in Ethiopia under the rug.

Like the rest of Ethiopia, the region underwent one regime change after the other—from Haile Selassie to the Derg and then the recent Abdi ’Iley’ dictatorship under the EPRDF. All regimes created and popularized new political narratives based on a selective and clearly instrumentalist interpretation of the region’s past. These narratives further complicated the writing and telling of local histories that did not comply with these state-sanctioned historiographies. The absence of independent research and academic institution further compounded this problem.

Some examples may highlight how important aspects of the Somali region’s political history have been silenced and overlooked by these two historiographies.

First, both have offered stereotypical accounts of the position of Ethiopian-Somali elites vis-a-vis the Ethiopian state. Rather than simply being for or against the central government, Ethiopian-Somali elites have gone through repeat cycles of compromise, partial acceptance, growing distrust, and full rejection of the Ethiopian state. A good illustration of this is the armed struggle against the Imperial government, which started in 1963 and was led by Makthal Dahir.

An Ogadeni feud and Somali folktale

By Hud B Abdulahi.

The Ogaden leader and his colleagues were former district commissioners working for the Haile Selassie administration before they took up arms. The Somali government of Aden Abdullah Osman supported the rebels initially until it agreed to a truce with Haile Selassie, leaving the insurgents in a limbo. The ONLF underwent a similar pattern of cooperation with the new Ethiopian government in the early 1990s followed by armed opposition between 1994 and 2018 and, today, a reintegration into the political system as a registered regional political party.

Both Somali and Ethiopian historiography have failed to account for this uncomfortable in-betweenness that has been the hallmark of Ethiopian-Somali political elites. When insurgents of the Western Somali Liberation Front started to mobilize against the Derg, the Somali government of Siad Barre again intervened to assist them. But, its agenda did not always align with the priorities of the WSLF. An eyewitness of the time whom I interviewed in 2012 about the 1977/1978 Ethiopian-Somali or Ogaden war told me:

“When the liberation movement reached Degehabur, the Somali army planted the Somali flag. The WSLF lost its temper and told them: ”Stop planting your flag there and don’t start collecting taxes!”

Many in the WSLF were eventually frustrated by the Somali government. The latter had helped them, but also internationalized and instrumentalized their rebellion. Somali state media like Radio Mogadishu and Radio Hargeisa covered the Ogaden war with vivid interest. But locals from the region were rarely on the airwaves. Instead, Somali military generals spoke on their behalf. This demonstrates how, historically, both the Ethiopian and the Somali governments have sought to appropriate and speak on behalf of the Ogaden (today, the Somali region).

Internal conflicts and contradictions

A second shortcoming of the Somali and Ethiopian historiographies of Somalis in Ethiopia is their unwillingness to consider internal differences and tensions.

The Somali region does not have a single historical and socio-political narrative. Rather, there are multiple—at times competing— narratives, which reflect divergent historical trajectories and experiences of its people. The region’s population is not just ’Somali.’ It consists of various social groups: from urbanites to agro-pastoralists, from livestock producers to traders, and from ancient inhabitants to newcomers.

Many of its inhabitants have multiple loyalties, family ties, and allegiances. Communities are thus not homogenous. The northern parts of Somali region, in particular Shinille and the Jigjiga lowlands, have a different political history than the Ogaden heartland. The southern and western parts of the region also have distinct historical features.

Ethno-national discourse always seeks to suppress internal contradictions. The longstanding conflict between the ONLF and the Ethiopian government was often portrayed as the latest edition of an age-old confrontation between ’Somalis’ and ’Ethiopians.’ This was true at the initial stages of the war when ethnic Somalis predominantly fought against non-Somali troops of the Ethiopian National Defense Forces

Democratic reform must mean fair deal for long-suffering Somalis

By Mohamed Olad

However, for a decade—roughly between 2008 and 2018—the conflict was between Somali special police members sponsored by the government and ethnic Somali that supported ONLF. This conflict was in many ways a civil war among members of the Ogaden clan family, pitting supporters of regional president and strongman Abdi ’Iley’ against his enemies. These internal conflicts and tensions among the Ogaden, but also between many other clan lineages in the region are an uncomfortable topic for Somali historiography. They are regularly glossed over given the perceived political imperative to present a unified front vis-à-vis the Ethiopian state and its representatives.

If Ethiopian historiography casually overlooks the repressive legacies of the Ethiopian state in its Somali periphery, Somali historiography ignores the ambiguous agendas of Ethiopian-Somali leaders past and present.

These examples demonstrate that there is a good chunk of Somali region history that contradicts, or at least complicates, both Somali and Ethiopianist historiography. Admittedly, political instability, repression, and remoteness have for a long time made independent research very cumbersome. This has rendered the emergence of a more nuanced and more empirically founded historiography very difficult. Basic ethnographic and historical accounts of the Somali region have yet to be written. To this day, the rural histories of the region— the histories of pastoralists, in particular—remain undocumented and unwritten.

Letting the Somali region speak

It is tempting to think that Somalis in Ethiopia have simply been unlucky with regard to their geography, that their home will always be the double-periphery of Somalia and Ethiopia, or that the region will always be stuck in its unfortunate colonial history. Others will argue that Ethiopian-Somalis’ difficulties in speaking for themselves are largely the product of an oral society with low levels of formal education. Some will point out that much of my critique and analysis is not specific to Somalis in Ethiopia, but that it applies in equal measure to many of Ethiopia’s historically marginalized groups, reflecting imperial legacies of the Ethiopian nation-state that remain unresolved today.

These reservations confirm that the history of Somali region and its people has not been told yet. They call for a paradigm shift in documenting and narrating the experiences of Somalis in Ethiopia. Their histories need to be told again, told anew, told on the basis of solid empirical data, and told from a different vantage point. The Somali region is not a periphery, it is a center. It is at the heart of the Horn of Africa, connecting highlands and lowlands, sea ports and inland cities, Islam and Christianity, and various ethnic groups.

A new history of the Somali region of Ethiopia needs to be written from this vantage point of centrality. It needs to make the voices of its men, women, children, and elderly heard. It will have to tell the story not of one people, but the stories of many people—of camel herders, female traders, khat sellers, school girls, farmers, administrators, returnees, rebels, investors, daily laborers, poets, and many others. It will have to tell stories of the powerful and the powerless, of joy and grief, of hope and despair. It will have to break free from the tropes of the existing politicized narratives.

Importantly, this new historiography of Somali region will have to be written by intellectuals from the region and its neighbouring territories. Rewriting the histories of Somalis in Ethiopia is not a purely academic exercise. It can help pave the way for a new political imagination that is liberating. A political imagination that allows Somalis in Ethiopia to finally speak up, to make themselves heard, and to be heard.

Ethiopia update

Eritrea Hub

Information about Eritrea and the Horn of Africa

High stakes as regional leaders gather in South Sudan and Sudan

MARCH 6, 2021 

MARTIN PLAUT

The meetings currently under way in the South Sudanese capital, Juba and the Sudanese capital, Khartoum could shape the future of the region. The question is this: are we seeing the emergence of two rival camps?

Or can they find a way to heal the wounds without giving up their critical objectives?

Abiy and Isaias in Juba

Rashid Abdi, one of the shrewdest commentators on the Horn, had this to say about the meeting in Juba.

“PM Abiy flew to Asmara to meet Afewerki on 4 March – first time two met since start of Tigray war. Two then travelled to Juba together.

Readout: Top priority for 2 ways to respond to growing calls for Eritrean troop pullout. US wants to see pullout in days, not weeks.

• Chance to project unity, dispel rumours of rift/tensions.
• Chance to project business-as-usual, relaunch Horn integration.
• South Sudan key target, 1 yr since they were in Juba last
• Juba’s pivot to Sudan, Egypt worries both, especially Ethiopia. Asmara-Cairo ties now frosty
• Stalled #GERD talks, border tensions with Sudan makes getting South Sudan on side crucial for Addis.
• Peeling Juba away from Sudan, Egypt not easy.
• Juba sees little incentive at the moment in tying its fortunes to two beleaguered regimes.”

If the talks between Salva Kiir, Abiy and Isaias make progress, then this would put President Kiir in a strong position.

Kiir could find allies to head off pressure for South Sudan to end its endemic corruption and bring about a semblance of democracy in his beleaguered country, from the international community.

Egyptian President joining talks in Khartoum

While Eritrea, Ethiopia and South Sudan meet in Juba, another meeting is under way in Khartoum.

Arab News reports that Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah-al Sisi, will hold talks with the Sudanese about the region.

“Spokesman for Egyptian Presidency Bassem Rady said al-Sisi’s visit to Sudan comes ‘as a consolidation of Egypt’s efforts under the leadership of the president to support Sudan and its brotherly people during the current important historical stage the [country] is going through.’

The visit will witness discussions on the most important regional and continental issues developments, it added, ‘especially the issue of the Renaissance Dam, security in the Red Sea, and developments on the Sudanese borders.'”

What is at stake?

For Eritrea and Ethiopia the key issue is the war in Tigray.

Both are under intense American Pressure for Eritrean troops to pull out of Ethiopia to try and bring the war to an end.

As the New York Times reported, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken on Tuesday pressed the leader of Ethiopia to end hostilities in the northern Tigray region, citing a “growing number of credible reports of atrocities and human rights violations and abuses.”

In a phone call with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Mr. Blinken pushed for Ethiopia to withdraw outside forces from Tigray, and for an immediate end to the violence, according to a State Department spokesman, Ned Price.

Pressure for action is rising at the United Nations, and tougher measures were only blocked because the Chinese and Russians were prepared to exercise their veto in the Security Council.

But the leaders know that further action is likely to be coming.

Ethiopia is trying hard to distance itself from its Eritrean allies.

As The Reporter said: “Ethiopia did not invite Eritrean troops to engage in Tigray region during the government’s law enforcement operation, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated.

In a weekly presser, spokesperson of the Ministry, Dina Mufti told journalists that ‘No official military agreement exists between the two countries. We have not made an official invitation for Eritrean troops to be involved in Tigray region,’ he said.”

This may be the official position of the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry, but at the moment the fates of PM Abiy and President Isaias are intertwined. Can the Prime Minister extricate himself? This is far from clear.

For Sudan and Egypt the key issues are the Grand Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Nile and the the al-Fasaga triangle.

There has been a troops buildup on both sides of the Sudanese-Ethiopian border with reports that Eritrean troops are bolstering the Ethiopian forces.

Tensions are high, with reports of clashes.

Both sides have a great deal at stake. Sudanese have sworn never to relinquish the rich farm-land.

Amhara farmers were displaced by the Sudanese after Ethiopian troops were withdrawn in October last year to join the fighting in Tigray.

But PM Abiy is dependent on the Amhara militia who attacked south-western Tigray and hold large areas that were previously under Tigrayan control, although there is a report that they may be withdrawing.

Amhara support is vital if Abiy is to win the Ethiopian elections planned for later this year.

For Egypt the filling of the GERD dam is critical to its water supplies.

The Sudanese and Egyptian Foreign Ministers issued a joint press statement this week in which they stressed that Ethiopia’s possible second-phase filling of the Nile dam unilaterally would pose a direct threat to the water security of Egypt and Sudan.

Cairo and Khartoum hope to reach a binding diplomatic solution on water usage mediated by the US, EU, UN, and African Union.

Rashid Abdi reports that Ethiopia is said to be willing to make major concessions on GERD to Sudan and Egypt.

“In return, it wants support to fend off US, Western pressure on Tigray. Cairo, Khartoum need a deal, end to Ethiopian unilateralism, but they deeply distrust Abiy & Afewerki.”

In summary: critical meetings are now taking place in Juba and Khartoum. Both camps have much at stake in these talks.

Is is really possible that the complex and interlinked issues of the GERD dam, al-Fashaga triangle and the Tigray war could begin to be resolved this weekend?

This seems unlikely, but miracles sometimes happen.

An historic footnote

It is worthwhile remembering that ties between Eritrea and the former South Sudanese rebels of the SPLA have deep roots.

In 1998 they came close to capturing Khartoum and overthrowing the Sudanese government in an operation funded by the CIA.

This conflict is admirably summarised in the Royal African Society’s publication, African Arguments. Two articles by Ahmed Hassan, which can be found  here and here, show how Eritrea and Ethiopia worked with Sudanese opposition movements to try to outs the Sudanese government.  As Ahmed Hassan argues, it was an alliance Eritrea and Ethiopia forged with the Sudan Alliance Forces (SAF) that did the fighting. They were backed by Ugandan troops and American money, in the form of CIA subventions.

The allies were attempting to outs the National Islamic Front (NIF) that had come to power in Khartoum in June 1989. Eritrea broke relations with Sudan in December 1994, and Sudanese rebels of the SPLA/M moved to Asmara officially in 1995 and were based in the building that had served as the Sudanese Embassy just few months previously. Tension between Eritrea and Sudan stemmed primarily from traded accusations that both Sudan and Eritrea were supporting opposition groups of the other country, and Islamist expansionism in Khartoum.

As Ahmed Hassan argues: “Most importantly, Sudan was viewed at that time by Eritrea, Ethiopia, and the U.S. as a destabilizing factor within the region posing serious threats with its adoption of a political Islamic agenda and the subsequent support to Islamic militants from Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia. That period also marked honeymoon of the relations between the U.S. and the ‘new breed’ of African leaders represented by Isseyas Afewerki, Meles Zenawi and Yoweri Museveni.” Hence the American support.

The war came close to succeeding – at one time threatening Khartoum’s power supply from the Nile. But in the end the Sudanese opposition fragmented. Internal conflicts and a lack of success on the battlefield led to deep divisions. As Ahmed Hassan suggests: “By early 1998, SAF reached its limit as an effective movement due to the limited capacity and narrow agenda of its leadership. Serious internal conflicts between the military and the civilian components of the movement started to surface.”

Then – out of the blue (apparently) – the May 1998 border war erupted between Eritrea and Ethiopia. Both nations moved to mend fences with the Khartoum government and their support for Sudanese rebel movements melted away. For Eritrea the war with Sudan was over: the border war with Ethiopia had just begun.

 

 

 

 

 

HRW REPORT ON TIGRAY SITUATION.

March 5, 2021 4:39PM EST

 |Report

Ethiopia: Eritrean Forces Massacre Tigray Civilians

UN Should Urgently Investigate Atrocities by All Parties

(Nairobi) – Eritrean armed forces massacred scores of civilians, including children as young as 13, in the historic town of Axum in Ethiopia’s Tigray region in November 2020, Human Rights Watch said today. The United Nations should urgently establish an independent inquiry into war crimes and possible crimes against humanity in the region to pave the way for accountability, and Ethiopian authorities should grant it full and immediate access.

On November 19, Ethiopian and Eritrean forces indiscriminately shelled Axum, killing and wounding civilians. For a week after taking control of the town, the forces shot civilians and pillaged and destroyed property, including healthcare facilities. After Tigray militia and Axum residents attacked Eritrean forces on November 28, Eritrean forces, in apparent retaliation, fatally shot and summarily executed several hundred residents, mostly men and boys, over a 24-hour period.

“Eritrean troops committed heinous killings in Axum with wanton disregard for civilian lives,” said Laetitia Bader, Horn of Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Ethiopian and Eritrean officials can no longer hide behind a curtain of denial, but should allow space for justice and redress, not add to the layers of trauma that survivors already face.”

The attacks in Axum followed weeks of fighting between the Ethiopian military and allied forces from the Amhara region and Eritrean troops against forces affiliated with the region’s former ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front.

Between December 2020 and February 2021, Human Rights Watch interviewed by phone 28 witnesses and victims of abuses and their relatives in Axum and examined videos of attacks and their aftermath.

Survivors consistently identified Eritrean troops by the vehicles bearing Eritrean license plates, their distinctive uniforms, the spoken dialect of Tigrinya, and their plastic “congo” shoes, worn by Eritrean forces since the liberation struggle.

On November 19, after Tigrayan forces and militia withdrew from Axum, Ethiopian and Eritrean forces began shelling the town around 4 p.m., continuing into the evening. The next day, witnesses saw Ethiopian and Eritrean forces indiscriminately shoot at civilians, including in the town’s Saint Mary’s hospital.

For about a week, the military forces pillaged. While several residents who spoke to Human Rights Watch saw Ethiopian forces participate, most said the soldiers just stood by and watched. “It was painful,” said one man. “I thought the Ethiopian military stood for Ethiopia and its people… but they did nothing as Eritrean forces looted and killed. They just kept silent.”

The abuses generated considerable anger in the town. On November 28, after 7 a.m., a group of Tigrayan militia and town residents attacked Eritrean forces, triggering fighting. That afternoon, Eritrean reinforcements entered Axum and went on a 24-hour killing spree.

Survivors described the horror of Eritrean soldiers moving through the town, going house to house, searching for young men and boys, and executing them. A student described watching helplessly as Eritrean soldiers led six neighbors, including a 17-year-old the witness knew as “Jambo” and another young man, outside. He said: “They made them take off their belts, then their shoes. They lined them up and walked behind them. The Eritrean soldiers fired their guns. The first three then fell. They fired other shots, and the other three fell.”

Eritrean troops shot other civilians on the street. “A group of soldiers killed a man and then forced a pregnant woman and two children that were with him to kneel on the asphalt street beside his body,” said one witness.

Those retrieving bodies for burial did not escape harm. Several residents said Eritrean forces shot at them while they tried to collect the dead on November 28 and 29.

The massacre left the town’s inhabitants reeling. One man visited a relative who lost her children in the house-to-house killings: “They killed her children and locked the compound door behind them, so no one could get in at first. She was left alone with the bodies of her two dead children for a day and a half. She was numb, unresponsive by the time we saw her.”

Human Rights Watch was unable to determine the number of civilian deaths resulting from the joint Ethiopian-Eritrean offensive on Axum and the ensuing massacre. However, based on interviews with elders, community members collecting identification cards of those killed, and those assisting the retrieval of the dead, Human Rights Watch estimates that over 200 civilians were most likely killed on November 28-29 alone. Human Rights Watch also received a list of 166 names of victims allegedly killed in Axum in November, 21 of which correspond to the names of those killed on November 28 and 29 given by witnesses interviewed.

International humanitarian law, or the laws of war, applicable to the armed conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, prohibits deliberate attacks on civilians and attacks that are indiscriminate or cause disproportionate civilian harm. Indiscriminate attacks strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction, including those not directed at a specific military target. The laws of war also prohibit all violence against captured combatants and civilians, including murder and torture. Pillage and looting are also prohibited. Individuals who commit serious laws-of-war violations with criminal intent, including as a matter of command responsibility, are liable for war crimes.

Crimes against humanity include murder and other unlawful acts committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack on a civilian population.

The late November attacks were documented by media organizations, as well as by Amnesty International. The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission has also begun investigations. Human Rights Watch provided its findings to Ethiopian and Eritrean government officials on February 18 but received no response. On February 26, the Ethiopian government announced it would thoroughly investigate events in Axum and expressed “readiness to collaborate with international human rights experts.”

While the lack of access to conflict areas has hindered reporting on the conflict, Human Rights Watch and others have reported on other massacres, the indiscriminate shelling of towns, widespread pillaging, including destruction of crops, and the apparent extrajudicial executions by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces, as well as forces from the neighboring Amhara region.

Given the presence of multiple armed forces and groups and the poor track record of the warring parties in investigating grave abuses, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) should conduct an urgent, independent inquiry focused on establishing the facts, collecting forensic and other criminal evidence, and investigating war crimes and possible crimes against humanity in Axum and elsewhere, Human Rights Watch said.

“Condemnations are not enough to bring justice to the victims of grave abuses committed by both Ethiopian and Eritrean forces in Tigray,” Bader said. “Attention and action by UN member states is needed now to ensure those responsible for these grave abuses are held accountable. So far, reports of these chilling abuses have been met by shameful silence.”

For background information and further accounts of the Tigray conflict, please see below. 

Attack on Axum, November 19-20

Axum is in northern Tigray, home to an ancient civilization, and declared a World Heritage Site in 1980 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Following the outbreak of armed conflict in Tigray in early November, many residents fled the fighting in western Tigray by crossing into Sudan or by going east, including to Axum, where they hoped to find a safe haven given the town’s historical and religious significance.

Axum residents were already feeling shortages because of the conflict. Ethiopia’s federal government cut off access to Tigray at the war’s start and food was in short supply. “Electricity was shut,” one resident said. “We couldn’t grind the grains. People subsisted on crackers. After a week, there was nothing. This affected everyone.”

In mid-November, airstrikes hit an area near Axum’s airport.

On November 19, residents heard the distant sounds of artillery getting closer from the direction of Shire, a town 40 kilometers west that Ethiopian federal forces had captured two days before. Several residents then saw Tigray special forces and militia withdraw from the town. “People were scared because of the terror in Shire,” said a man who fled to Axum. “No one opened their shops or the market.”

At about 4 p.m., Ethiopian and Eritrean forces fired artillery into Axum that struck buildings, hit the town’s cobblestoned streets, and killed and injured civilians. Panicked residents sought cover from the shelling, some hiding in their homes, others fleeing to rural areas, following a pattern of attacks already documented by Human Rights Watch during the conflict.

Artillery hit the wall of a house in Kebele 02, killing four civilians inside. One young man said: “We were scared, this was our first experience with war. We didn’t know what they were targeting. A heavy weapon hit a home. The blast scattered the bodies of Kassa Enquay, Almaz Zeraya, Ammanuel Berhe, and a young woman who worked as a housekeeper.”

The shelling continued until evening. Residents then heard gunfire.

Around 8 a.m., the next morning, residents saw Ethiopian and Eritrean armed forces move unopposed into Axum from two directions. One said: “At first, I saw and heard nothing, it was like a horror movie, eerily quiet ... But then I started hearing unusual sounds. I went out and saw the sound was from the tank treads on the asphalt road. The soldiers started shooting, causing everyone to run.”

A man saw his barber, Mebratu Muruts, shot by a mixed group of Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers: “He tried to run. They shot at him four times before he finally fell.”

Eritrean forces shot patients in the town’s Saint Mary’s hospital, killing both civilians and wounded Tigrayan fighters. A man from a nearby village brought his sister for treatment at the hospital but Eritrean forces fatally shot her as well: “My sister was in the bed. I was in the chair beside her. Suddenly, the [Eritrean forces] came in and started shooting. She got hit by a bullet and I started to run. After killing people, they took medicine, beds, and other equipment.”

Widespread Pillaging, November 20 to 27

For a week, Eritrean forces raided neighborhoods and pillaged homes, banks, pharmacies, and jewelry, electronic, and souvenir shops – hauling away the stolen goods on trucks.

A man displaced from the town of May Gaba saw Eritrean soldiers break into a neighboring compound. “There was a big water tank, they emptied all the water, then stole the tank and pump,” he said. “They even took children’s toys, small bicycles. They took everything, all they could, on the truck.”

The widespread pillaging of medicine, beds, and equipment from Axum’s medical centers prevented injured and sick people from getting treatment. A day laborer said: “Eritrean soldiers took all the medicine from the pharmacy, especially from Axum’s referral and Saint Mary’s hospital. They loaded it onto Tata trucks with Eritrean license plates and left toward Adwa [a town east of Axum in Tigray]. So for those that needed or could afford to buy it, there was nothing available.”

A resident said that on November 30, he tried to get urgent medical care for a woman injured by the shelling:

I found her in pain and unable to talk. Her lower jaw was hanging down. I tried to clean her wound and made her lie down in Saint Mary’s church. She had fled Humera, but the war caught up to her here.

I recognized two nurses trying to flee town. I convinced them to help me take her to Saint Mary’s hospital. When we arrived, we found the pharmacy looted. Everything was gone.

A video sent to and analyzed by Human Rights Watch seems to show the pharmacy of Saint Mary’s hospital on November 30. The video shows a room with drawers open, shelves with empty medicine boxes, and packages dumped on the floor. The date given through interviews with the videographer corresponds with the date in the video’s metadata.

Several residents saw Ethiopian soldiers participate in the looting. One witness said: “The Ethiopian troops searched houses, they broke the window and gate of the Branna hotel, destroyed government offices and Dedebit bank, and robbed the money.”

Most, however, said that the Ethiopian soldiers stood by and watched the violence. “I asked one soldier, why are you not doing anything, you are Ethiopian, and we are in Ethiopia; you are allowing the Eritreans to do this,” said one resident when he complained to Ethiopian forces about the looting. “He told me: ‘We need an order from above.’”

Ambush and Fighting on November 28

Four residents said that on November 26 they watched a group of Ethiopian federal forces leave Axum with heavy weapons, heading toward Shire. Before they left, one resident approached an Ethiopian soldier who told him: “We have to leave Axum, you guys watch your city. Good luck.”

On November 27, about 50 more Eritrean soldiers arrived and set up a base near a technical college on May Quho hill. Others were stationed near the old airport area.

The shelling and widespread pillaging had created anger and tension in the town. “Eritrean soldiers had beaten and killed people; they looted so much property,” said one young resident. “So we were emotional and upset about what they were doing to Axum people.”

On November 28, at about 6 a.m., 10 to 30 Tigrayan militia members lined up behind the historic Saint Mary’s church and headed toward May Quho.

Residents, mainly young men and boys, joined on impulse. Two participants said that local youth managed to take weapons, including Kalashnikov pattern rifles, from an abandoned Tigrayan forces camp, while others carried sticks, knives, and stones.

One participant in a group of 16 youth said:

Some young people got weapons, such as Kalashnikovs, from a weapons store at a camp. I was there when they got the weapons. We didn’t discuss this beforehand, none of us were trained, but all of us were angry, sad, and emotional about the looting, killings, and beatings of people. A few people joined, and then others followed.

Witnesses saw youth attack and kill about 10 Eritrean soldiers getting water near May Quho. Gunfire then erupted and Eritrean forces fired towards the town and onto the hill, residents said.

Peaceful churchgoers leaving morning prayers at Saint Mary’s church were not spared. Four congregants said the gunfire sent hundreds running. One worshiper said: “We were leaving church when we heard gunshots. I saw a woman aged around 50 and another person fall on the ground as I ran. I dodged the firing by running house to house until I reached my home.”

One youth who tried to deliver food to the militia members saw several young men die in the clashes, including a resident, Tegazu.

A man watched residents heading to the hill from his hotel: “I saw someone carrying two guns in his hands. He asked, ‘How do I shoot these guns?’ A little boy was joining the battle.” Later, he saw Eritrean snipers shoot at youth in the town and at those trying to get up the mountain. “The young boy who passed by the hotel earlier fell from the mountain,” the man said. “He wasn’t older than 12.”

Clashes lasted until 4:30 p.m. when Eritrean forces called for reinforcements. They arrived firing heavy weapons from the direction of Adwa, forcing the militias and youth to stop fighting and retreat back into town.

Human Rights Watch reviewed a video of the gunfire exchange on May Quho, which confirms witness accounts. The 6:22 minute video contains four scenes edited together. The first scene shows at least 10 people running up May Quho amid constant gunfire. The second scene shows a group of at least 16 young men in civilian clothing, unarmed, with no visible or makeshift weapons gathered at the bottom of the hill. One man is carrying a child on his hip. By matching key landmarks visible in the video with satellite imagery, Human Rights Watch was able to establish that the group was standing at the bottom of May Quho, approximately 70 meters northeast of the Queen Sheba’s bath and 580 meters from Saint Mary’s church.

Massacre on November 28 and 29

Witnesses said that from 4 p.m. on November 28, until the following morning, Eritrean soldiers attacked Axum residents, shooting indiscriminately or summarily executing those they found on the streets or in house-to-house searches. Young men and boys were the evident targets.

A witness saw four Eritrean soldiers kill two people he knew, including a child:

Haftom Kalem was young, maybe 16 or 17. He was near Saint Mary’s church. I saw him running when Eritrean forces yelled at him to stop. He kept running, and they finally shot him. A teacher, Alemshewit Gebrewahid was next. He was at home and opened the door to see what was going on. The four soldiers noticed him. He was screaming: “What did I do? I don’t know anything. I am a civilian.” One soldier shot him twice.

They seemed to be cleansing the area.

A driver saw six Eritrean soldiers lead six people, including two of his friends, out of a motel near May Quho where they had been hiding, and shot them dead. He said:

I was hiding in a room on the third floor watching from the window when the soldiers came and led Mulu, John, [two other men], and two women outside. They made the four men line up in front of the wall. The two women pleaded with them [the soldiers]. They pointed their guns at the women and told them to keep quiet. My two friends were killed. Mulu was shot in the chest. John, in the neck.

Soldiers also shot and killed civilians on the street. One man saw Eritrean forces shoot his friend Tesfaye on November 28. “The Eritrean soldiers came in front of him,” he said. “He had a bottle of water and biscuits in his hand that we bought together earlier and that he planned to have for dinner. He [Tesfaye] raised his hands as they shot him.”

A student found the main and side streets filled with dead bodies. He recognized the bodies of four friends in front of Abnet Hotel: Ashenafi Berhane, about 13; “Jambo”, 17; Yonas, 20; and Negash Saleh, 19. He said:

They all had bullet wounds. Most shot in the abdomen. Yonas in his back.

I went to Jambo’s mother. When I entered the house, everyone was crying. His mother rushed up to me and grabbed my hand, she kept asking: “Where is Jambo? Where is Jambo? Where did you leave him? Why did you leave him?” I was crying, she was crying, I could say nothing to her, I didn’t know what to say. Then someone said [about me], “He knows he’s dead.”

As the sounds of gunfire seemed to decrease, residents attempting to pick up the bodies were shot at. One said:

We saw dead bodies near the NIB bank. A woman was among the dead – she was wearing a netela [traditional white cloth] and was in her 30s. The rest were young. As we were trying to collect the bodies, weapons were fired toward us, so we left the bodies and ran home.

Some residents, however, managed to pick up bodies from the streets on November 29. Human Rights Watch reviewed a video showing a body being carried on a stretcher. An identity card from the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia displaying the name and picture of Gebrehiwot Gebrekidan is shown to the camera. A woman uncovers the face of the deceased revealing his face. The facial hair and age are consistent with the photograph on the identity card. Gebrehiwot Gebrekidan was among the list of men killed. According to the metadata attached to this video, it was recorded on November 29.

By evening on November 29, Eritrean forces had detained hundreds of men and boys and held them in at least three sites. Witnesses saw soldiers execute some of the detained men. Three Eritrean soldiers entered Saint Mary’s church and detained men sheltering there. One witness.

Great-Power Competition Is Coming to AfricaThe United States Needs to Think Regionally to Win.

Great-Power Competition Is Coming to Africa

The United States Needs to Think Regionally to Win

By Marcus Hicks, Kyle Atwell, and Dan Collini

March 4, 2021

Under President Donald Trump, the United States withdrew troops and resources from Africa as part of a broader national security shift from counterterrorism to great-power competition. The Trump administration used the euphemism “optimization” to describe the pivot away from Africa that began around 2018, but a more accurate term would be disengagement. It pared back efforts to fight jihadis in Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria, downsizing the U.S. military footprint in some of the continent’s most volatile regions. And in the final months of Trump’s presidency, his administration withdrew nearly all U.S. troops from Somalia.

The shift in U.S. strategy toward Africa reflects an assumption—shared by many in Washington—that counterterrorism and other long-standing U.S. priorities in Africa will diminish in importance as competition between the United States, China, and other significant powers intensifies. But that assumption is wrong. In fact, far from being a distraction from great-power competition, Africa promises to become one of its important theaters. And if anything, great-power competition will increase the need for the United States to battle terrorists and safeguard democracy, trade, and free enterprise in Africa—but to do so with particular attention to limiting the malign influence of Russia and China.

President Joe Biden’s administration needs a new strategy that pursues these ends together, sustainably, and at an acceptable cost. For as long as the United States has had an Africa policy, it has run day-to-day operations through its ambassadors, tailoring its approach to each of the continent’s 54 countries individually. But today’s most pressing issues—terrorism, climate change, pandemics, and irregular migration, for instance—would be better served by regional coordinators whose authority transcends national borders. To safeguard its interests on the continent and to limit the influence of its rivals, the United States must start thinking regionally instead of nationally.

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Devising such a policy is a matter of some urgency. As current and former military officers, one of whom led the U.S. Special Operations Command for Africa from 2017 to 2019, we believe that the United States must position itself as the partner of choice for African countries in the era of great-power competition. Failure to do so will imperil U.S. interests on the continent—and possibly U.S. security at home.

PARTNER OF CHOICE

Like it or not, a twenty-first century “scramble for Africa” is underway. Russia and China in particular are ramping up economic and military activity on the continent at the same time as the United States is scaling back. Both countries see opportunities to build economic relationships, secure access to natural resources and rapidly growing markets, forge political alliances, and promote their own illiberal models of government.

Russia has dramatically expanded its footprint in Africa in recent years, signing military deals with at least 19 countries since 2014 and becoming the top arms supplier to the continent. Just days after the United States announced its plans to withdraw from Somalia in December 2020, Russia said it had reached an agreement to establish a new naval base in Port Sudan. Its mercenary companies, including the Wagner Group, which fought a deadly firefight against U.S. Special Operations Forces in Syria in 2018, now operate across the continent, from Libya to the Central African Republic to Mozambique.  

China, too, is angling for influence in Africa. It established its first overseas military base in Djibouti in 2017 and spends vast sums on infrastructure projects to secure access to resources and to buy goodwill and votes in international organizations such as the United Nations. China’s leaders have promoted their country’s authoritarian bureaucratic system as a model for African leaders seeking to expand their economies without allowing democratic reforms. Their attractive lending practices and noninterference policy regarding human rights, market liberalization, and corruption give them additional influence over poor African governments. 

Increased Russian and Chinese activity is already transforming Africa into a theater of competition with the United States—just as Soviet and U.S. jockeying made the continent a venue for Cold War rivalry. In the second half of the twentieth century, the United States, the Soviet Union, China, Iran, and North Korea provided military assistance to governments and rebels across Africa. These countries became embroiled in proxy wars, sometimes even sending their own troops into combat. Russia and Cuba, for instance, sent tens of thousands of soldiers to fight in the Ogaden War between Ethiopia and Somalia and in the Angolan civil war.

Like it or not, a twenty-first century “scramble for Africa” is underway.

The United States might prefer to avoid becoming embroiled in African proxy wars during this new era of great-power competition, but it must be prepared for such conflicts nonetheless. Already, Libya has become a theater for proxy warfare between Russia, Turkey, and other countries backing opposite sides in an increasingly bloody civil-turned-proxy war. The United States has played a peripheral role in that conflict, but that did not stop Russia from allegedly shooting down a U.S. drone over Libya in 2019.

The United States cannot simply withdraw from Africa without leaving its interests exposed. Salafi jihadi insurgencies, political instability, and authoritarianism still threaten U.S. businesses and commercial interests as well as the security of U.S. partners. Like the Afghan Taliban in the 1990s, insurgent groups in Africa are mostly motivated by local and regional concerns. These groups draw recruits from the continent’s large and rapidly growing population, which is particularly vulnerable to radicalization due to persistent poverty, environmental degradation, and all too often, poor governance. But many of the groups’ leaders have links to al Qaeda and the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, and are increasingly aligned with transnational Salafi jihadi causes. At the direction of al Qaeda’s senior leadership, al Qaeda franchises in the Sahel have conducted attacks against high-profile Western targets in Algeria, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger in recent years. And the Somali insurgent group al Shabab has attacked Western targets in Kenya and Somalia and even plotted to hijack a commercial airplane and fly it into a building in the United States, as the U.S. Justice Department revealed in a recent indictment. Moreover, Salafi jihadi groups create political instability that in turn degrades governance, depresses economic activity, allows transnational crime to flourish, unleashes refugee flows, and invites health crises such as the 2014–16 Ebola pandemic in West Africa. In an interconnected world, what happens in Africa does not stay in Africa.

Fortunately, the United States and African countries share a common interest in countering Salafi jihadi groups. By offering sustained and effective counterterrorism assistance, the United States can become the partner of choice for African countries, encouraging them to develop their economies and political systems in accordance with Western norms. Successful great-power competition in Africa hinges on the United States’ ability to win over African governments with a holistic counterinsurgency strategy, one that addresses the root causes of terrorism and lays the political, economic, and developmental groundwork for future stability and prosperity.

FOCUS ON THE STATE

The standard U.S. approach to Africa relies on ambassadors to be the primary decision-makers. The Department of State’s regional bureaus give ambassadors varying degrees of support and direction, but the individual chiefs of mission coordinate most closely with their host governments. This approach has the advantage of putting career diplomatic professionals in the driver’s seat—a clear benefit when dealing with country-specific issues and crises. Unfortunately, ambassadors have neither the staff nor the incentive to look beyond the borders of their host countries to engage with regional organizations or address transnational problems, such as Salafi jihadi insurgencies.

The al Qaeda­– and ISIS-affiliated groups in Africa are not confined to any one state. Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin and ISIS-Greater Sahara, two of the most potent jihadi groups in the Sahel, move freely across the region to carry out attacks. Boko Haram and ISIS-West Africa do the same across four countries in the Lake Chad region, while al Shabab ranges far outside Somalia’s borders into Kenya and Uganda. Population growth, environmental degradation, and tensions between nomadic and settled populations fuel conflicts that these groups can exploit. As a result, any U.S. strategy to degrade jihadi insurgent groups and address the root causes of the instability that drives them must be transnational in nature.

The United States must also address the interstate coordination issues that allow insurgents to escape military pressure simply by crossing international boundaries. Rather than seeking sanctuary in rough or difficult-to-access geographical terrain, insurgent groups simply exploit interstate coordination problems to roam freely in border regions. Often, they do so along borders between states that have tense diplomatic or military relations. For instance, Boko Haram operates on the border between Cameroon and Nigeria, which have a history of conflict.

The country-by-country approach to Africa not only fails to address coordination issues but can also serve to entrench them. For instance, Congress approves funds for military activities based on its assessment of individual partner countries—not based on the regional dynamics of the threat. As a result, lawmakers may approve a program to train and equip a partner force in one country to address a regional threat but restrict the use of U.S. equipment and the activities of U.S. advisers to within that country’s borders. Such inconsistency not only hampers counterinsurgency efforts but fuels the perception that the U.S. military is an unreliable partner.

THINKING REGIONALLY

Critics of the current country-by-country approach have called for an overarching continental strategy. And indeed, both the Obama and Trump administrations published strategies for continent-level engagement, but neither spelled out specific ends or means. As a result, various levels of government were free to interpret the strategies as they saw fit, and the country-by-country approach endured in practice. The Obama and Trump documents were useful insofar as they offered broad frameworks for engagement, but the truth is that Africa’s needs are too diverse and too complex to be addressed by a single strategy, except at a very superficial level.

What the United States needs is not an overarching continental strategy but one tailored to specific regions. African countries have begun to take such an approach themselves. For instance, in response to al Qaeda– and ISIS-affiliated jihadi activities across the Sahel, five African countries established the G5 Sahel group to coordinate military activities, enable cross-border joint operations, and solicit aid from international backers. Similarly, the Multinational Joint Task Force in the Lake Chad basin coordinates military activities between Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria to counter Boko Haram. The African Union Mission in Somalia likewise coordinates the efforts of Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, and other nations to battle al Shabab.

France has taken a similar approach to insecurity in West Africa and the Sahel. In 2014, it established Task Force Barkhane, a roughly 5,000-soldier operation centralizing security policy and administrative functions across Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger.

The United States cannot simply withdraw from Africa without leaving its interests exposed.

Governance failures in these countries and abuses by their security forces have undercut Barkhane’s effectiveness, as has France’s overreliance on counterterrorism tactics at the expense of population-centric counterinsurgency efforts. But the regional approach has clearly eliminated cumbersome bureaucratic hurdles and helped maintain pressure on the militants.

The United States should articulate similar regional strategies for the Sahel, the Lake Chad region, the Horn of Africa, and southeastern Africa—each with clearly defined goals, however generational the timelines for achieving them might be. The strategies should draw on mostly nonmilitary means and aim to improve governance and security, thereby addressing the root causes of radicalization. For example, the United States should reinvigorate USAID, along with other developmental and governance initiatives, so as to better position itself as the partner of choice to African nations. But it must also make the necessary military investments, in particular in synchronizing its advising, training, and equipping activities as well as its tactical and operational support for partner militaries. Military and nonmilitary support alike must be coordinated regionally and aligned against regional threats. Each regional strategy must also be developed with input from Congress and clearly explained to the American people, so as to ensure popular as well as bipartisan support.

To implement its regional strategies, the United States will need empowered regional officials who are authorized to coordinate activities within their areas of responsibility. Regional coordinators, or envoys, have been used to coordinate responses to transnational issues in the past, but they have typically answered to the secretary of state rather than to the president. As a result, they have lacked the authority to compel cooperation from the U.S. military or from individual U.S. embassies or to adjudicate their divergent priorities. Regardless of their exact title, or whether they are civilian or military, the officials in charge of regional strategies for Africa must have the president’s support in order to effectively coordinate the various instruments of American power at their disposal.

The return of great-power competition does not mean that the United States can turn its attention away from Africa. On the contrary, increased Russian and Chinese activity on the continent will necessitate deeper U.S. engagement. To promote stability, good governance, and economic openness in Africa while countering the illiberal influence of competing powers, the United States will need a regional strategy that is capable of addressing transnational threats. Anything short of that will cede the advantage to the United States’ adversaries on a continent where opportunities and risks are set to grow in the coming decades.

 Foreign Affairs .